


Ad Nauseam

by Interrobam



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Autistic Rung, Body Horror, Body Image, Coping, Dissociation, Gen, Hallucinations, Introspection, Medical Experimentation, Medical Torture, Non-Graphic Violence, Noncanon Pronouns, Other, Psychological Trauma, Robogore, Scars, Trauma, Trauma Recovery, Vivisection, functionism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 04:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4815830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interrobam/pseuds/Interrobam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Rung had spoken the word of cern frame, once. But the Functionists had risen, and it had become necessary for cir to become inviolate. Cie could not survive as a body marked for annihilation. Cie could not speak the word of a body which was pain."<br/> </p><p>A story about trauma and dissociation, mind and body, integration and compartmentalisation. A story about Rung mending, slowly.</p><p>(Canon Pronoun Version Here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4815875 )</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ad Nauseam

**Author's Note:**

> Rung's pronouns, cie/cir/cern/cerns, are conjugated as follows: “CIE asked me to tell CIR where CERN stylus was as soon as I figured out which datapads were CERNS.”

Rung’s body was a symphony.

Rung’s frame was a clatter, an orchestra. The click of gears meeting at the teeth, the hum of a steady spark, the gulp of a fuel pump, whispers of energon through lines and electricity through circuits. The hiss of a T-Cog skipping, the groan of a taxed spinal strut, the chime of an empty tank, a cackling rust infection cie was neglecting. Rung’s body was history transcribed in the tongue of the allspark.

Rung had spoken the word of cern frame, once. But the Functionists had risen, and it had become necessary for cir to become inviolate. Cie could not survive as a body marked for annihilation. Cie could not speak the word of a body which was _pain_.

\---

Rung pressed the pad of cern thumb to cern thoracic plating, buffed back and forth until cie half felt half heard the minute disruption, the hint of irregularity in the surface. Cie traced the line, a crude path of shallow divots and crumbs of welding, from the window of cern spark chamber to the base of cern collar and back down. _It happened_ , cern sensornet told cir, despite the self repair protocols that had long since reintegrated the dead welding into cern living plating, despite the distortion that had long since come to cern phantom pains, _it was real_.

\---

Some of cir was missing.

As the Functionists’ power had begun to wane, Rung had started to knit back together, but some of cir was long greyed, could not be weld back to cern protoform. Some of cir had been carved from cern struts, sloughed off in an operation, broken off in shards, left to rot on some Institute floor.

Not cern body, oh no, that had been too precious to discard. That had been tagged and labeled and carved and sampled to exhaustion. Cie spoke of cern “secret” compartments as if every portion of cern frame had not been mapped and marked and categorized thrice. No fraction of Rung had been kept discreet, had escaped inspection. It was only the parts of cir which the surgeons had not cared to preserve that had degraded under their ministrations: cern mind, the thrum of cern spark, cern benevolence.

These things which Rung could only access as phantoms.

\---

Rung resented them for doing such a clean job, the last time they sealed cir back up. Cie’d rather have weldscars everywhere they had cut cir open, so that at least cie could have a catalogue, a record to check cern memories against. Cie had a memory of them peeling back cern facial plating, a thousand precise cuts-- dissecting cern persona, degrading cern being. Cern optics blooming open, paralyzed by the boosters but able to feel, to see everything. Cie had a memory that was vivid and detailed and smelled like energon, but when cie traced cern fingers over cern facial plating cie couldn't find the corresponding scars.

Cie _thought_ cie remembered, but there were so many impossible things cie remembered.

The stress on cern sensornet had been immense, agony overtaxing the instruments that constructed cern vision, cern hearing, cern orientation in space and time. Cern processor had strained to make impossible connections, run illogical protocols, which led to hallucinations and distortions of reality. During one episode cie‘d talked to a sphere of light, like a unframed spark, in pictographs. At a different moment cie had floated above cern body, watching the operation without any sensation of pain.

So maybe they never touched cern face, never opened cern plating like the iris of a camera, never plucked cern wires out of alignment. Cie couldn't find the scars. Cie couldn't say for sure.

\---

Under ultraviolet light the back of cern neck lit up like a poppy field.

\---

Rung had known even then, even in that dark night, that there was no _actual_ self discrete from frame. Cie had plotted oily inscribed brain modules with cern fingers. Cie had peeled back layers of neurocircuitry, cut them to pieces. Cie had seen sparks flicker and fade: often, too often. Rung was cern body, cern body was Rung. Cie was never meant to be fractured.

 _A being which is subject to violence must react_ , cie told cirself. _It must construct coping mechanisms, defenses. It must butcher and siphon the integrity of the mind for the survival of the spark. Serenity is comely, but one cannot make fuel out of it._

If cie had not split cie would have shattered.

\---

Cie thought about petitioning Ratchet for the use of an ultraviolet lamp.

They were rare and precious things: a fully stocked hospital might have three, a police district two. Ratchet's medbay, ever equipped, had one. Rung skittered around the idea of asking. Cie trusted Ratchet-- or came as close as cie could-- but cie did not trust hospital slabs. Cie did not trust spark monitors, the smell of ozone and energon, little red crosses. Cie liked Ratchet, but cie did not like the idea of explaining _why_ cie needed the lamp to Ratchet. Cie could have lied, said it was for a patient, claimed confidentiality.

Cern tanks roiled at the thought.

\---

They had not called Rung by cern name, and cie had hoped they would never start. How nice it would be, cie had thought, once everything was over, that every time cie heard cern name spoken cie would remember that cie was not there.

\---

Rung had come, after a while, to accept cern brief fantastic trips out of reality (geometric shapes and motes of colored lights had appeared in the air and seemed real enough to touch). They had not always been pleasant, but they distracted (parasites had run through cern energon lines, too small to see but crawling so that cie had itched until cie scraped cern paint off).

Cie discovered fairly early the trick of becoming something not-Rung, an impartial and indifferent observer of everything done to and by cir. At those times cern hallucinations were more solid than cern reality. Rung sometimes had the impression that cie could simply wave cern hand and dissolve the entire Institute into smoke and soot, that cie had the absolute power to stop this at any time paired with a complete avolition to do so.

Its funny, what the processor decides it can and cannot tolerate.

\---

Cie switched the hab suite lights off and glowed like starlight.

Cern mutilated plating sang with luminescence: the ragged seams of weldscars long smoothed, the delicate dappling of needlemarks, the architecture of cern burned out circuitry. Under the lamp that Nautica had lent cir, carefully affixed to the wall, cie was a beacon in the dark. The palms of cern hands looked like a cross section of a diseased brain module. The weldscar where cern thumb had been reattached looked like a ring. Cern reflection flickered on cern berthroom window, catching cern optic.

Cie stared at cirself.

The glowing webwork of scars cut off with disturbing abruptness across the middle of cern face. The newest portion of cern helm, constructed whole by Ratchet’s former hands, was swallowed in darkness. Cie looked two-faced in cern reflection, a galaxy of memory embossed against the cold yawning void of space. If cie turned cern helm at a certain angle, offlined cern optics, cie appeared utterly helmless. Cie lifted cern hand to cern face, traced a sharp and surgical line of luminance from the bridge of cern nose to the corner of cern optic.

It had been so long since any part of cern body was new.

\---

Rung’s body was an almanac.

Rung’s frame was a ledger, a directory of phenomena, a calendar of debt. Rung’s frame had been annotated and crossed out, inscribed at every inch with a language that cie had, perhaps, once spoken.

A word that cie may yet speak again.


End file.
